


Tsunami Girls

by GwenTheTribble



Category: Lost Voices Trilogy, Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - All Female, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern: Still Have Powers, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Alternate Universe- Mermaids, Angst, Cisswap, F/F, Trans Female Character, because i hate him, except Shaw, for most of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-05-08 19:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5510159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenTheTribble/pseuds/GwenTheTribble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erika answered first.  "I changed in nineteen forty-eight.  I am eighteen years old."  Hank nodded.  the eldest mermaid she had ever met had been a week shy of twenty.<br/>They all looked at Hank.<br/>"Nineteen sixty, when i was seventeen years old.  I also went down the drain.  I ended up somewhere around Virginia beach. And that is my point.  None of us are anything close to new.  In all our years, how many 'mutants' have you seen?"  She looked from face to face.  None of them spoke, but their expressions spoke volumes.  Not enough to form a tribe to stop Shaw.</p><p>All girl AU where when something makes a girl's heart go cold, she becomes a mermaid, and is tasked with singing ships to their doom.<br/>All of our heroes have changed before they got the chance to meet each other in 1962.  In the year 2013, Sebastian Shaw must be stopped before he destroys both the land and the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The concept of the mermaids, what makes them mermaids, and the laws they follow are all taken from the lost voices trilogy by Sarah Porter

"It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one.

Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it."

 

Henrietta 'Hank' McCoy was seventeen years old, and had been seventeen for sixty-eight years. By her estimations, at least. It was hard to keep track of the humans months and years when you were forbidden from contacting them, and your only means of finding out news of what was happening on land was to question the girl who had been the most recent shift.  
It was even harder when asking a girl about her previous life was considered one of the rudest things a mermaid could do.

 

Swimming back to the cave, Hank could hear the distant laughter of the other girls. There were only eleven other girls in her tribe, none of whom seemed to have been born with the abilities Hank seemed to have. Even now, she was stronger than every girl in her tribe, and her fins were twice as big as any she had ever seen.  
Hank turned the corner around a large group of rocks along the shoreline, and now there was nothing between her and the other girls. Under the water Hank watched seven beautiful tails swirl lazily in the water, varying from shell pink to deep plum, all with a strange dark green glimmer. She popped up a little ways from the beach, surveying the beautiful girls all draped on rocks or against the shore, cracking oysters open and munching on kelp. Olivia, the queen, sat on a prime rock, a pile of oysters next to her. Olivia smiled at her as Hank got closer, but most of the others didnt take much notice of her. Her fins made mermaids just as uncomfortable as her feet had made humans disgusted and angry. Hank was really only sticking with this tribe because it was dangerous for a mermaid to be alone, and also because she felt a loyalty to Olivia, who had offered her a place when a few in the tribe were opposed.

 

When Hank had first turned she had been on her own for a few weeks, but she had instinctively known not to attempt contact with the humans on the shores or that passed over her head in boats. She knew the tail would just frighten them, and that they might very well kill her.  
It had been 1960, after all. Last Hank heard it was now March, 2013. Of course, that information was out of date. Hank estimated that it was probably June. The cruise ships were moving constantly past the cave that the girls slept in, making things very risky. There were only twelve of them, and not nearly enough good singers to attempt to take down a ship of that size if one of them was spotted.

 

For now, Hank was getting closer to the other girls on the beach, hoping to just eat and leave again. It wasn't that they were mean to her or anything, but they didn't share any of her interests. They just weren't compatible. Hank had graduated from high school when she was eleven, but she could tell that if she had just been born Really Smart and had actually attended high school at the normal age, it would have been exactly like this for her. Nobody talking about anything that interested her. At high school it would have been dresses and movie dates and the football team and who was going to be at the Hub this weekend. Here it was killing and singing and what ships to sink and how long it would be before they could sink another.  
Hank did not care about sinking ships. She cared about science, and reading, and current events. But she couldn't really do much science when she was in the ocean and had zero tools. She had finished studying the marine life in this area decades before. There was nothing to read in the ocean, and it was considered odd to talk about the humans or anything they created, unless it was about how awful they were and how much you wanted to kill them. Lastly, the only current events in her life were the last ship they sunk together. Hank could write a disertation on exactly what was wrong with mermaid culture; there was none. Mermaids did not create, they did not even study. They came to the ocean frightened and bitter, and they died bitter and angry, the same age as the first day.  
Hank was the oldest member of her tribe, and she felt it strongly that day. Hank could usually put on a smile, throw the weight off her shoulders, frolick through the waves with the other girls like she was still seventeen, truly seventeen. 

She cracked open an oyster, slurping at it quietly. She looked around, surveying her tribe. The girls were all supernaturally pretty, as all mermaids were. Hank had been shocked when she saw her own face after the change. It was true, her Mama and her aunts and her grandmothers had all agreed, Hank was a very beautiful young lady. But they had always said it like they meant, oh, what a shame. The girl born with a face like that is born with feet like that, and as tall as her father. That face, and those brains. What a waste, no man is going to want a girl who won't leave the lab long enough to marry him, no matter how pretty. So, while it was true that Hank had big blue eyes and good cheekbones, long streaming hair that she usally tied back, even if it was brown, Hank had never really considered herself pretty. Especially not at her height, with feet that even if you didn't know what they looked like, who would want a girl with feet that were mens size sixteen?  
Hank was wondering if maybe she should just leave the tribe, risk the sharks and follow the gulf. Maybe to Mexico? She could go live with the girls on the coast of south america. She already knew spanish. Or maybe going up towards the north would be better. Either way, it had to be better than this. didn't it?  
But she wasn't going to leave. Hank already knew that she wouldn't. A mermaid off on her own had an experation date, a countdown clock. In the ocean, you need someone watching your back.  
While she sometimes wondered if that would really be so bad, she was mostly able to keep such thoughts away. It's a bad day, not a bad life. Her Mama had chosen those words to comfort her when the other children had teased her. She probably didn't expect her daughter to still be using them for comfort when she was nearing seventy, not a wrinkle or grey hair in sight.  
"Hank? Hank!" The call broke into her thoughts, finally reaching her. She shook herself, wondering how many times her name had been said. Olivia floated in front of her, round faced gentle and kind. She was a decent queen, Olivia. 

"Yes?" Hank asked, cracking open another oyster. 

Olivia smiled slightly, looking around at the sheltered cove. "I just noticed you were all by yourself again. I was wondering how your day was." 

"I'm not much of a talker. My day was fine, how was yours?" Hank asked, hoping to move the conversation away from herself. I'm not much of a talker. The defense of kids everyhere who just were not fitting in. 

"Nice. We swam out to that one private cove with the tree that hangs over it. We would have invited you, but there are so many little caves that we weren't sure which one you were in." Olivia smiled apologetically. "What did you do?" 

Hank did not intend to tell Olivia what she had done, as one of the other girls may have overheard and told the others and then they might have thought that Hank thought she was better than them and didn't want to be a part of the tribe. 

"Still searching for that elusive Haverford eel." Hank offered, giving her standard lie. There was no such thing as a Haverford eel, but the other girls didn't know that. It provided cover for what she had really been doing this past week, which was finding a cave to sleep in during the day, waking up at sunset, eating, swimming out as far as she dared, and then craning her neck back to stare at the stars, unadultered by the human's light pollution. 

 

"You'll find it one of these days!" Olivia encouraged Hank, making her feel guilty for lying. 

"Well, i hope so." She shot back weakly.

"You will, I know it. Listen, Hank. I was thinking, it's been enough time since the last ship! There's one that we could take down easy, with your help." Olivia finally got to the point. The worst part about being a mermaid and having eternal youth and beauty. Casual murder. 

She braced herself for what she knew Olivia was about to ask her to do. 

"So we just need you to do what you normally do. Are you in?" Olivia asked, as though Hank had already agreed. Of course, no mermaid Hank had ever met shared her aversion to sinking ships, so it probably didn't even occur to Olivia that she didn't enjoy killing. 

"When did you want to do it?" She asked numbly. She may have been willing to kill when she was new to the sea, but that didn't last long. She kept thinking about her family, and how even if the entire human race was as bad as the other mermaids said, her family had been the kindest people she knew. Her family was not the reason she was here. 

"There's this cargo ship, passed by here about half an hour ago. It was heading further south, but we can catch up, easy." The others could hear what their queen was suggesting, and were growing visibly excited. Olivia took no notice of this, gazing at Hank. Olivia was not the most beautiful mermaid Hank had ever seen, but she had thick raven hair, wide full lips, and trustworthy dark eyes. In fact, that was the essense of her beauty. Something about her inspired trust, and faith. 

Hank knew that this was inevitable, and that they would probably attempt to sink it without her help, risking the humans seeing them. 

"Okay, that sounds great. We should probably go now, yeah?" Hank nodded, hoping to get this over with. 

Olivia beamed at Hank. "Great! Girls, she said yes!" The queen immediately began calling out orders. "I want Debra, Joan, April, and Dawn on the starboard. Holly, Evangeline and Gabby, you should get in front. Christin, Lani, Jemma, you're on port." The girls all nodded before diving down and darting out of the cove, eager to begin the hunt. Olivia smiled at Hank, obviously just as eager as them. Hank nodded before diving below the water. Olivia whipped ahead of her, dark tail streaking. Hank sped after her, her own sea foam tail propelling her foreward.

 

The ocean blurred past her, the darkening ocean occassionally broken up by the bright bursts of color of fish. If she crained her head she could see streaks of bubbles that the girls had left. Soon she found herself in the large wake that the ship had left behind, and could feel the vibrations of the engines on her skin. The tribe was already getting into position, but Hank veered towards the coast and dove deeper. They were out towards the open ocean, but down at the floor was some of the debris of sunken ships. 

Hank allowed her eyes to adjust to the light before hurrying and selecting the least rusted beam she could find, using her unexplainable strength to pull it to the top. She gulped the air when she broke the surface, clutching the metal beam, filling her lungs before she dove again. Swimming under the water was a million times easier than with her head out of the water.  
The sea was already lacing with voices, singing, all throbbing and unfurling into each other until all the humans could do was give in. The water seemed softer.  
She hurried closer. One or two bodies were already in the water. The ship appeared to be listing towards it's port side, but with a ship of this build, too many people were within the ship to be reached by the song. That was where Hank came in. 

She shifted the beam in her arms so that it was like a spear and locked her sights on the propellers. The girls had retreated farther from the ship. Hank threw the spear, hurtling herself down towards the sea floor to get away from flying metal. There was a terrible crunching and grinding, and then the sound of metal breaking. Then there was a sound that was, while indescribable, unmistakably the propellers giving out. Finally, an even bigger crash. The hull, cracking. 

Hank looked up. The ship was truly listing now, and the girls and resumed singing at full volume, begining the slaughter in earnest. She could feel her own song spiraling in her throat, desperate to be released. Olivia's song was all trust. Trust that this was the right decision, trust that where you were going was better than this. The humans believed her, and drowned willingly. Hank felt the song in her own throat jolt, and opened her tightly clenched jaw. It spread out through the water as she moved closer, wrapped up in her own song. It was exciting, a melody that jumped and dove. 

The ship was sinking in earnest now. Her jumping song was joining the wraps of the silk that the others were creating. There, April's haunted house ballad. It chased the men falling overboard. Hank rose up at the back of the ship. An older man fell off the rail he was clinging to as the sinking ship shuddered deeper into the water. He splashed into the water near Hank, and barely fought as he sank. She sank back beneath the water, watching the air bubbles rise from his gaping mouth. All through this, she kept singing. She hadn't sung her death song in what felt like eternity. 

The crew was small, and dead quickly, the ship soon following after. The girls were all sated, and Olivia led them back to the cave. Hank had that strange sick excited feeling that you get from doing something that you know you shouldn't. It was dark already, and they were sleepy on the swim back to their large cave. Hank pulled herself up slightly onto the beach, enough to get air while she slept, but not so much that her belly button was out of the water. They were all stretched out in a row, their heads illuminated by the moonlight streaming through cracks in the rocks above them. Hank's last thought before falling asleep was that the moonlight was a good night kiss, the kind a few of them hadn't ever had, and the rest of them hadn't had in a very long time.

 

She was in a small cove, private from the others, but they knew where she was. It was where she bought scavenged bits of ships to see if they were salvegable. She wanted to build a phone, but didn't tell the others that part. To build a phone would be a clear intention to violate the timahk, the mermaid laws. They were basic. A mermaid must endeavor to save another mermaid, unless it would cost her her own life. A mermaid may never harm another mermaid. Communicating with humans was prohibited. Lastly, if a human heard a mermaid singing, the human had to die.  
Punishment for breaking the timahk was expulsion from the tribe, which was easily death sentence. Hank knew all of this, but she couldn't leave the idea of a phone alone. Her whole family was most likely dead or dying, but she couldn't stop thinking of her Mama in the kitchen, picking up the phone and having the same face that Hank had seen when she was fifteen. Hank knew that unlesss she was very lucky, both her parents were dead. All the same, she kept trying with the phone. 

Evangeline came swimming up behind her, where she lay on the beach, tail carefully submerged, and tinkered with the recovered parts. 

"Olivia's coming back early. We saw her, she's got a bunch of newbies with her." The dark haired girl reported. Hank quirked one of her thick untamed eyebrows. New people? Metaskaza- mermaids, recently turned? Hank hadn't heard of a group Metaskazas appearing together. But there wasn't any tribe nearby that she knew of. 

"How many with her?" She finally settled on asking. 

Evangeline considered for a moment. "Three, I think. I think she might bring them here." 

Why would Olivia do That? Hank wondered. "Why?" She asked.

Evangeline shrugged. "They were headed more in this direction. That's all i know." She offered, before flicking away with her sunset orange tail. 

Hank watched her go, eyebrow still raised, before turning back to her work. Evangeline had probably gotten the wrong information.

 

At least, that's what she had assumed, until her ears picked up the sounds of Olivia leading a group of new voices, closer and closer to the entrance to the small cove. Hank tensed, but continued working, trying to look casual. 

"Hank!" Olivia greeted, with a small smile. She often reminded Hank of her boss at the CIA, Directer Richardson. "I wanted to introduce you to Charlotte,-" A petite blue eyed mermaid with a sky blue tail smiled at Hank- "Erika,-" a girl with a face like a razor blade- "and Raven." A sweet faced girl, with a lighter emerald tail. Her blonde hair shone in the North Carolina sunshine. 

"Hi." Raven said, beautiful blue eyes sparkling. 

If Hank hadn't been in the water, her palms would have slick with sweat. 

"Hello." She managed to grind out. Great, now she looked like an idiot. 

Raven didn't seem to mind, just smiling and looking around. Charlotte swam forward, hand out. Hank stared at it blankly before getting remembering suddenly that that was how humans greeted each other. She took it, shaking it and thinking that these girls must be new. "I'm Charlotte." She reintroduced herself in an english accent, making even the shy Hank feel a bit more comfortable. 

"Hank." She responded. Her eyes kept attempting to stray to Raven. 

"How wonderful. Another mutant, why didn't you mention?" Charlotte asked Olivia, still smiling. Hank's heart dropped. Until now, nobody had asked about her tail, being too uncertian that they wouldn't like the answer. Olivia's small smile faltered, falling away to confusion. 

Charlotte's smile also slid off, to a look of horrible realization. "Because you didn't know." She said regretfully. She turned to Hank, her eyes full of remorse. "Hank, I am so sorry. Truly." 

Hank nodded once, quickly, her jaw clenched. No one would want her around now. How had Charlotte known that Hank had been born with a birth defect? 

Olivia's eyes went wide, almost a little betrayed. "Hank? Why didn't you tell me?" She asked. 

"No one asked, so I didn't tell." She offered quietly. She wanted to cry. But she didn't want them to think that she was crying, so she looked up from where she had been staring at the water. Raven was smiling encouragingly. She smiled shyly, suddenly willing to say or do anything to make this girl keep smiling like that at her. 

"What can you do?" She asked, eyes lingering on Hank's oversized fins. 

"Come outside and i'll show you." She offered, already moving towards the way out of the cove. They moved to let her through, and then followed her. Outside, Hank was inspecting the distance between them and an outcropping of rocks, which was some ways away. "Queen Olivia. Please swim out to those rocks, as quickly as you can." Olivia's brow wrinkled but she did it plum tail whipping through the water, driving her forward. Hank counted in her head the seconds it took Olivia to swim there and back. Twenty four seconds. She glanced back at Raven. Why was she doing this? Just because the most beautiful girl Hank had ever seen had smiled at her? 

At the thought of the smile Hank shot away from them, hurtling towards the rocks, large fins moving powerfully. She looped around them at break neck speed, her hair streaking behind her. She made her tail move harder, picking up speed, hurtling past Raven and the others before she could make herself stop moving. "ten seconds." She informed them as she swam back, heart aglow with the look of wonder that Raven gifted her. Her golden hair was wavy, and swirled in the blue water beautifully, reminding Hank of a Van Gogh painting. Her redish lips were parted in an archers bow smile.  
"You're amazing." She declared. Hank wanted to sing, she was so happy.

 

Later, after they had introduced the rest of the tribe to the visitors, she learned why exactly they were there. Hank had shown Olivia one of the larger caves she had found, with more than enough space and air for all of them. Mermaids did have to breath, but they could go a while inbetween breaths. 

Erika, who's face was beautiful the way a well kept axe was beautiful, moved around the cave like a panther, occasionally stopping to convene with the much gentler Charlotte. Olivia explained that she had always believed in people with special abilities, her father had assured her that they were out there. Hank now understood why her Queen reminded her of her former Director. 

Neither had realised their connection to each other because speaking about a mermaid's past life was an unspoken taboo. 

Charlotte and Raven were sisters who had met Erika several days before. They were all what they had refered to as 'mutants' and insisted that Hank was one as well. 

"The doctors said that it was a birth defect." Hank insisted, not liking the sound of 'mutant'. 

Charlotte smiled gently and said, "You and I both know that a birth defect wouldn't have so many positive quailities, and so few negative ones. Well. Other than socially. But the strength, the speed, the functionality of the feet? Thats a mutation, not a birth defect." She explained, smiling like Hank already knew all this. 

It was true, she had questioned how something that, other than socially, had had only benefits to offer could be a defect. But because she had only herself to draw conclusions from, she came up blank. How Charlotte had known about the specifics of it was another matter, and she had several developing theories, though one seemed more likely than the others considering what they were telling her.  
"Your theory is correct Hank, top marks. I am a telepath." Charlotte said, without any prompting. This didn't seem to surprise Raven or Erika, but did make Olivia do a double take. 

"Telepathy? What can the rest of you do?" She asked excitedly, making Erika seem to bristle. 

Raven noticed and attempted to intervened, saying "Shapeshifting." 

Fascinating. 

 

Hank glanced at her admiringly, but couldn't help it when her gaze once again fell on the metal belt that hung around Erik's waist, and the cloth wrapped around her forearm. She had rarely seen a mermaid wearing clothing. In fact, none of them was wearing anything to cover themselves, something that she no longer thought twice about. She would think it strange if a girl wore something to cover her breasts but would understand, as a few of them still felt shy about their bodies. But the forearm seemed a strange place to be modest about. The belt especially gave Hank pause.  
Erika looked at Hank, seeming to assess. 

"Well, you showed us yours." She rationalized before flexing her hand. The belt around her waist broke, or more accurately, twisted apart. It twisted in the air above the water before wrapping loosely around Erika's waist with a decisive clink. 

Olivia seemed excited, but kept herself under control. 

"That's very interesting, but why are you here?" Hank finally asked. Raven and Erika looked at Charlotte, who smiled rather sheepishly. 

"Well, you see Hank. I don't have much shields against stonger emotions, and I was swimming along the Thames in London, just seeing what was what. I do rather miss living on land, you see. It was late at night when i found myself near one of the more abandoned parts of the docks, and I felt myself drawn towards the one person there, a younger woman. She was pacing back and forth next to a parked car, and from what i could glean from a surface scan of her mind, she was deeply concerned about something. Nobody would help her with it, and she felt very certian that if nothing was done, things would be very bad for the whole world." Charlotte explained, seeming to draw it out to avoid something. "Finally, I stuck my head out of the water and called out to her." Olivia and Hank visibly jerked, Hank never having met a mermaid that so unthinkingly and openly violated the timahk. Charlotte hastened to explain herself. "I believed her trustworthy, and that assesment has proven correct. I explained myself, both the tail and telepathy to her, and offered her help, if i could provide it. She was rather unsettled, but agreed. She worked for the CIA and needed help taking down a man named Shaw, who also seemed to have powers and had convinced a man to vote pro placing Jerico missiles directed at Russia. She told me that she believed this Shaw fellow to be on a yacht in the caribbean, and i told her that my sister and i could easily take down a small yacht." Hank and Olivia settled, interested in the story. When you have the opprotunity to be young forever, but nothing ever changes, a new story was worth more than gold. "Raven and I made our way over from England by scavenging two life vests and lashing ourselves to the backs of large ships. Moria met up with us in on the coast, and gave us the coordinates of Shaw's yacht, and told us when to attack. When we did, we found that Shaw is immune, or at least resistant to our song. We also met Erika, who was attempting to raise his escape submarine. Shaw escaped, and we met again with Moria, who suggested that we locate other mermaids with abilities like ours and form a team to take him down." Charlotte finished finally, looking at Hank and Olivia as though for approval. 

Olivia spoke first. "Why should we help someone who has broken the Timahk, three times? Knowingly? What will this human do to the world that we should break our most important law?" She asked with a calm ferocity. 

Erika almost growled, but Charlotte held up a hand as though to quiet her. "We believe he is attempting to begin a nuclear world war, starting between America and Russia. That would damage the ocean rather badly." It was true. If Shaw really had the power to do this, it wouldn't impact only humans, or only mutants, or only mermaids, but every living being on earth. If there was ever a time to cast away the Timahk, it was now. 

"So you're plan is to just swim around, and hope you find people?" Hank questioned. 

Raven opened her mouth as if to say something, but seemed to have no response. She closed it. 

Charlotte swept her hand through her thick brown hair nervously before admitting; "well, if I'm being terribly honest, yes." Hank sighed. 

"If what you're saying is true, just swimming around will take to long. How long have you been in the ocean?" She asked, mind already whirring with possible solutions. Something was finally happening. 

Erika answered first. "I changed in nineteen forty-eight. I am eighteen years old." Hank nodded. the eldest mermaid she had ever met had been a week shy of twenty. 

Raven answered for both her and her sister. "Charlotte changed in ninteen fifty-four. Eighteen years old, English chanel. I was a little later. Fifty-seven. I was fifteen years old, Paris. What about you two?" She asked Hank and Olivia.

Olivia went first. "nineteen fifty-six. seventeen years old. I went down the drain in New Orleans, and got spat into the gulf." They all looked at Hank.

"Nineteen sixty, when i was seventeen years old. I also went down the drain. I ended up somewhere around Virginia beach. And that is my point. None of us are anything close to Metaskaza. In all our years, how many 'mutants' have you seen?" She looked from face to face. None of them spoke, but their expressions spoke volumes. Not enough to form a tribe to stop this man.  
"Schmidt must be stopped. What would you propose we do?" Erika antagonizingly asked. 

Hank thought for a moment, aware that all eyes were on her. "I may have an idea. If we could harness your telepathy, could we... artifically broaden your range? Can you give me an idea on your range?" She questioned Charlotte. 

Charlotte gave an almost aristocratic shrug. "I can clearly feel the rest of the tribe.. Theres two other tribes, one smaller, one larger. Both are further down the coast. The closest is maybe... twenty miles? No mutants." 

Hank nodded quickly, grabbing Charlotte's hand and tugged her out of the cave, pulling her towards the cove with all her metal scraps. 

"I've been working on a few things, but it never works because everything I have has been in the water." She explained, gesturing to the half finished inventions that had obviously been thrown at the rocks on shore in fits of rage. "Can you control people? Give them instructions?" 

Charlotte nodded, blue eyes curious. "What do you need?" 

Hank looked around. These frankestein attempts at machines were years of work, all worthless. Finally, something to do. A problem to solve. Hank gathered her thoughts, organizing tools and supplies and ideas. 

"It's a long list." 


	2. Chapter 2

Charlotte was as good as her word, getting Hank the supplies she needed and commanding the CIA workmen Moria had sent to follow Hank’s instructions, and to forget who they had seen every day.  Moria came down to inspect their progress, and she was very polite and kind to Hank.  She asked Hank what it had been like, to be one of the first women scientists at the CIA, and at such a young age.  They chatted when Moria and Charlotte weren’t busy talking about the plan.  Hank and Moria talked almost like coworkers, though they were decades apart. 

Moria told her all about policy changes and the things she was doing in the field.  Hank’s clearance level had been higher than hers, they discovered, allowing Moria to confide in her without guilt.  One day she brought Hank the New York Times and she consumed it, lobbing questions at her left and right that day, hungry for any scraps of any information she could get.  Charlotte read the paper after her but she did it more casually.  Charlotte could call anyone to the water, ask them of the day’s events, and send them on their way without any fear that they would remember her.  Hank did not have those luxuries.  She barely had time to read the paper, so busy she was directing the work men, and making calculations, and building a full size water proof fully functional machine she had not thought of until last week. 

Hank kept going.  She had wanted something new, not a war.  But war was what she had been given, so war was what she would do.  More and more she became aware that Erika and Charlotte were interested in each other.  She wondered how soft and gentle and bright Charlotte could be compatible with hard and harsh and cutting Erika, but she shrugged the question away.  She was more concerned with the fact that Raven seemed to be interested in her, and what she could do to keep it that way. 

One day, swimming along the ocean floor and thinking simultaneously about Raven and the machine, which she had nicknamed Cerebro, she heard Raven call out to her. Hank jerked her head up fast, casting her eyes around for her. She flicked over to Raven, reclining on a large smooth rock.  They were very close to the surface, and this was terribly reckless, but the sun was managing to reach them through the water and it was deliciously warm, right there on the rock.  Hank sat on the rock, her tail curling around her to the best of its ability.  She looked at Raven, but only from the side, not desiring for her to think she was staring at her.

Looking at her from the side had its drawbacks though. It meant that Hank could see right into the winking green haze that hung over all of them, and see right into the moment that turned Raven cold enough to prefer the horrors of eternal youth than the pain she felt on land.  She found herself unable to look away as she watched, the glimmering images giving her the impressions of the whole.  A small child living on the street. A loving sister who asked her to hide herself.  A sister, suddenly gone. A world, so harsh and cold and hateful of so much of what Raven was. A slip up, a scaly blue hand in front of humans.  An assault, and Raven left to die in the gutter. 

Hank was aware Raven was looking at her the same way. 

“What do you see?” She asked quietly. 

“Your blue form.”  Hank said bluntly, unsure of how to say it nicely, she glanced away, out to open ocean. “What do you see?”  She asked. 

“Your feet. You breaking your uncle’s hand when you were eight.  Human shit.”  She managed to say.  Hank’s cheeks burned with embarrassment.

“What if I could fix it? Our mutations?” Hank asked her. “I’d give anything to feel normal, wouldn’t you?”

“Is that what we want?” Raven asked. They were looking right at each other.

“It’s what we need.” Hank said with conviction. If her fins were smaller, she could join any tribe she wanted. If her fins were smaller, she could pretend they never happened. A part of her, the great and deep chasm part of her, thought that it may have started with the feet and transitioned to the tail but now so much of it was Hank, and that she would never be happy, not ever. She wondered if her brain had ever developed past 17, if these were genuine feelings, or the heightened sensations of youth. 

She was so very tired of being trapped.

“If we could fix being mutants, maybe we could also fix being mermaids.” Hank said quietly.  Raven stilled, and turned her head away from her.  Hank leaned forward, to see what Raven was seeing.  In the distance she could make out Charlotte and Erika swimming along, side by side, Charlotte talking exuberantly to Erika. For a moment, Raven looked like the old woman she was.

“Charlotte has never understood. She’s different, but she doesn’t have to hide.” She told her, gaze thoughtful. “This serum, it wouldn’t affect abilities right? Just appearances?”

“Yeah, just normalizes us.  And, eventually, maybe give us our legs back.” Hank nodded vigorously. 

“Do you think it would work on me?” Raven asked.

Her heart leapt at her willingness.

“Absolutely. Absolutely it would. I would just need some samples of your blood.” Her request, though justified and necessary still seemed creepy to her, and she flushed at the thought that she had been too forward.

“No problem, tomorrow?” Raven asked.

Raven had agreed to the idea. Hank only had to figure it out, and maybe she could be walking away from this. 

“Sure. Yeah.” She stumbled through her response. 

Raven tossed her head and smiled. 

“Better get back to work.”  She said in a singsong voice and swam away.

Moria was a sharp woman.  Charlotte had controlled the CIA workers so well that now they took instructions from Hank and Moria. Of course, they went home every night, satisfied with the work they were doing on what they believed to be a military base. Charlotte had instructed them to take care of themselves, and they were being paid, so Hank wasn’t too bothered by wiping their memories, just a little unsettled. 

“I need a way to draw and analyze blood, by tomorrow, Agent MacTaggert.”  Hank said, closing her copy of The British Medical Journal and setting it aside.  The agent looked at her with slight interest and took a bite of her salmon-cucumber sandwich.  

Hank was eating her own lunch of cracked mussels. 

“I’ll see what I can do.” Moria said. Meaning, she would get what she requested. 

The two of them sat together in quiet, surveying what had once been a simple cove and was now half machine.

“You’re rather old Dr. McCoy.” Moria observed. 

“I suppose, though I’d wager you’d never guess,” Hank replied, “why the interest in my age?”  For some reason, she never felt nervous around Moria when they were alone. She simply felt like a kindred spirit.

Moria took a thoughtful bite of her sandwich. Her shoes were off and she was sitting cross legged on a rock, with her tin lunch box set next to her. 

“It’s just that, you’re rather old now, but you were rather young when you changed and disappeared.”

“That’s true.” She agreed.

“I suppose I’m asking if you haven’t thought of anyone you left behind?” Moria asked. 

Hank tilted her head reflectively.

“I think of them often.  But as you said, I was rather young then, and I’m rather old now. I don’t think anyone’s left.”  She said.

“If you don’t want to know, that’s fine, and I won’t push it.  But I can run their names for you, right now, if you do want me to.” Moria offered.  Hank felt her lungs constrict, which was ridiculous, as her last inhale had been not ten minutes ago. 

She shut her eyes.  She felt as though she could not swim, as though she would simply slip under the surface and never come back up if she let go of the rock Moria sat on. 

“Even if they were alive, I can’t do anything.”  She muttered. 

“You’re a scientist, Dr. McCoy.  Aren’t you at least curious?”  Moria cajoled.

She thought for a moment.  Could it make anything worse?  Probably not. 

“Alright, fine.” Hank grouched. 

“Excellent. Parents first?” The agent asked. 

_We both chose careers that require curiosity, Agent MacTaggert,_ Hank thought as she nodded.  Moria tapped on her CIA issued computer pad, which she had explained to Hank, who was still learning all of the advancements that had been made. 

“Names?” The Agent said, finger poised to type. 

“Edna and Norton McCoy of Illinois.” Moria hit the search button and stared at the screen for a moment. She made a small triumphant noise when the search put up the results.  Hank looked away from the screen, staring at the way the sun shone on the water. Her sea foam tail hung in the water, not looking nearly as lightning fast as it was. 

“They’re still alive Hank.” The other woman said gravely, as though she could possibly understand. She couldn’t, because Hank herself couldn’t.  She couldn’t anything, couldn’t smile or cry or summon any anger.

“Oh.” She barely breathed. Suddenly the water felt very cold, even though the summer was rather warm.

“They’re healthy, all things considered. Though your dad did have a touch of pancreatic cancer about a decade back,” Moria plowed on. Hank’s heart gave a guilty somersault. “Let’s see here… Says here they filed more than a few complaints with the government to release information regarding your disappearance. It seems that a few higher ups thought that there may have been Russian or Chinese involvement, but they kept it hushed up. The last request was filed in 2005.”  The words were like an ice cold fist around her heart. She thought of stepping out of the ocean and taking Raven to Illinois with her, how her parents would be so scared and shocked by her reappearance. All at once she was filled with the deepest desire to be human again.  Not even again, she wanted to be human for the first time, she wanted normal feet. She wanted Raven to not have to be scared ever again, she wanted to rejoin the world. 

“Hank?” Moria asked. “Hank?”

She swallowed hard and willed herself speak.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” She answered finally. “That control table needs to be a little higher, I think we need to build a wall around this cove so we can control the water level.” She looked around. They couldn’t make cerebro both accessible from the water and also leave it at the mercy of the tides. 

“There should be a hatch for us to swim through, passcode protected. The other girls are going to notice this soon, so we can’t allow them to reach it. The workers need to start wearing something that will block out singing.” She continued. 

Moria nodded.

“Like noise cancelling headphones?” Moria asked as she tapped on the pad. 

“No. Something more, something electronic. If they hear even the faintest strain of music, they’ll probably walk into the water and drown.  Or have a mental break. I should have thought about this sooner. Moria, you need to start wearing something that can block them out too.”

“Of course. What frequency do you sing at?” Moria asked, voice professional. 

“I have no idea. In fact, halt the work for today, send everyone home, you too. We can’t continue without this.” Hank urged. She had forgotten how to care for others.  For decades now it had just been about her reluctance to kill. 

Hank looked at Moria.

“Try to find something that can cancel out anything ranging from a blue jay to an, I don’t know, a jet taking off,” She rushed to say.  “And the blood, Moria, I need it.”  Hank said over her bare shoulder. 

She didn’t bother to see if Moria had anything else to say, diving under the water and whipping out of the cove. Open ocean was frightening, and she hung close to the coast, where it was safe.

She didn’t know where she was going, except that she had to move. 


End file.
